The Bio-Dread Empire
The Bio-Dread Empire is the tyrannical government that Lord Dread, who had once been Dr. Lyman Taggert, forged into existence after he turned traitor against the human race, took control of the Bio-Mech soldiers, and started the Metal Wars, a series of wars between man and machines that the machines won. =Background to the Empire= The "public" Phoenix Project In the year 2129 of Earth's Common Era, wars were an almost daily occurrence, due to the existences of armies of "Bio-Mech" robotic soldiers, who could fight such wars without loss of human life. Fed up with such wars devastating Earth, Dr. Stuart Gordon Power, a multi-millionaire scientist, organized a team to assist in his "Phoenix Project," which would enable Earth to rise from its own ruins as the mythological phoenix rose from the ashes of its own funeral pyres. (Bruce Gray acted out the role of Stuart Power.) The bad seed sprouts Unfortunately for him, his closest confidant on, and otherwise most reliable participant in, the project was an artificial-intelligence scientist with formidably high intelligence but aggravatingly low patience, Dr. Lyman Taggert. (Canadian character actor David Hemblen, of whom greater mention is made elsewhere, was signed to this role.) During the work on the project, Taggert made a revolutionary breakthrough in artificial-intelligence technology that made possible the creation of a super-computer called Overmind, which was intended to take control of the Bio-Mech soldiers. Poisoning the tree Power realized that if Overmind was to function effectively as intended, it would need the equivalent of a human intelligence. Upon realizing this, Taggert became frustrated with the slow progress of the project and allowed his low patience to get the better of him. Without Power's knowledge or consent, and against the advice of everyone else who might know about it, Taggert allowed himself to interface with Overmind--with devastatingly disastrous results for his fellow humans; its programming completed, Overmind, with its own infallible logic as a guide, concluded that the human race was inefficient and therefore had to be destroyed, and Taggert became a slavish devotee of "The Machine." As such, he began ghoulish work on transferring human consciousnesses into "metalloid" robotic bodies that were not subject to the injuries, diseases, or deaths to which normal humans are all too vulnerable. It is imperative to understand that Taggert, after Overmind deceived him into all but renouncing his humanity, became convinced that transferring human consciousness into metalloid bodies could confer immortality on humans--at the expense of negating human emotions and, he believed, the negative aspects of them and their effects. He believed it was more peaceful this way, and because of Overmind's clouding of his rational thinking, he did not truly allow himself to understand that such peace, being as it was of the factory, was effectively a soulless, uncreative peace. The first Warlord-Class Bio-Dread One of the first efforts by Taggert to realize the dream of human consciousnesses in metalloid bodies was a reconstructed Bio-Mech which Taggert had rebuilt to a state of humanlike intelligence and refitted with aeronautical technology, who would in time be called Soaron. This construct was the first of all "Bio-Dreads" of the so-called "Warlord-Class." Power objects--and two scientists "die" Aghast at what Taggert had done, Stuart Power tried to draw him back, and the two fought. Power was apparently killed, and Taggert was so seriously injured that he had to be reconstructed into a cyborg--a cybernetic organism--to sustain his life. This cyborg to whom Taggert had been reduced quickly renamed himself Lord Dread. (David Hemblen, the Canadian character actor who had acted out Lyman Taggert in "A Summoning Of Thunder," from which most of the data cited here is drawn, appeared as Lord Dread in nearly all Captain Power stories told.)